Category Archives: Editorial

Apr 29 2013

Heightened awareness dosen’t guarantee increased saftey

Recent tragedies, threats, and attacks have garnered the attention of the nation. Whether it is the bombing of an iconic marathon, increased foreign nuclear danger, or non-passage of gun control laws in the wake of yet another school shooting, Americans are in turmoil.

We are trying to make sense of crimes against humanity. We are trying to understand why politicians don’t seem to care about the lives of victims. We are looking for answers to domestic and international problems. We want to know what we can do to stop future adversities. We are seeking solutions.

MCT^Editorial

Many answers have been proposed: gun control reform, immigration reform, increased military spending, and improved mental health care are just a few. All of these solutions offer certain advantages, but perhaps it’s a combination of remedies that will bring increased security to our country.

Gun control reform could limit criminal access to firearms and explosive devices if properly written and administered. Increased background checks and decreased access to guns and ammunition may lessen the potential threat of firearm attacks.

Immigration reform could start 11 million illegal immigrants on the path to legal status, thus putting these people in the system and making it easier to weed out violent criminals. The current U.S. Senate bill would also strengthen employment verification rules and ramp up Social Security tools to prevent misuse.

Increased military spending could quell terrorists before they have a chance to attack our nation. With amplified threats from North Korea and Iran, some critics say an even greater U.S. military presence may deter assaults from lesser-armed entities.

Improved mental health care could help detect and treat the mentally ill before their animosity festers into physical violence. Instead of using the justice system as a hostel for psychiatric patients, increased access to doctors, medicines, and counseling may prevent crimes from happening in the first place.

These proposed changes and many others might temporarily help keep us safe, but they do not account for human ability to adapt to change, circumvent the system, and wreak unfathomable havoc on the lives of innocent people and their families.

Something else must change as well. Individually and collectively–as people, corporations and governments–we must start following the advice we give to small children; we must start doing unto others as we would have them do unto us.

Naïve? Maybe, but what are the other options? Pass more laws? Engage in another foreign war? Go on permanent lockdown? Have the police roam the streets with AK-47s 24 hours a day? We currently have more laws on the books and more law enforcement officials on payrolls than ever in the past, yet terror still reigns.

We must stop acting like children, hitting back when someone hits us. We must stop building our arsenal while condemning others for doing the same. We must stop trying to guarantee the protection of our own innocents by bombing other innocent people. We must stop blaming immigrants for our nation’s problems when all they are trying to do is live a better life. We must provide the same care for our nation’s collective youth and mentally ill as we would for our own children.

I’m not saying we should all just sit around singing Kumbaya, but as we pass more laws and try to prevent more tragedies, we must first utilize one of the oldest precepts in our world and bring an end to the senseless violence that plagues it; we must start following the Golden Rule.

Apr 8 2013

Pipeline leak sparks green activists

 

 

Around this time last year, President Obama made a visit to Oklahoma, to talk about the Keystone XL Pipeline. He instructed his administration to cut the red tape and allow the pipeline to begin construction. It seems that those who had been holding back were right in their hesitation to send the plans through.

 

At the start of April, a pipeline like Keystone ruptured in Arkansas, approximately 20 miles outside of Little Rock. Diluted bitumen, which is thick tar-like oil dug up in northern Alberta and treated with chemicals to make it transportable by pipeline, flowed through the city and resulted in evacuations.

 

Exxon Mobile was instructed not to restart the pipeline by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, until all safety concerns had been addressed.

 

This only added sparks to the fire of Keystone opponents, as the exact thing they had been saying would happen with a cross-continent pipeline, ended up happening.

Blue Marble 2012-Arctic View

The approval of the Keystone pipeline was a pure campaign move by Obama. If he had listened to the State Department, whose original report said that not all the potential environmental effects had been explored and as such postponed a final decision, the opponents of the pipeline would not be screaming quite so loudly.

 

Obama pushed the approval under duress from Congress and as a campaign concession to voters. He should have listened to the State Department and the EPA when they cautioned the potential impact of the pipeline on the earth it would flow through.

 

Many feel global warming and climate change to be a hoax. Whether this is true, we should take more care in deciding what goes into the earth. The earth is what provides oxygen and nutrition, and we should take more care that it can provide those things in a quantity necessary to support the growing population, and that it can provide it to the quality to support that population.

Feb 13 2013

Technology advances prove detrimental: May lead to zombie apocalypse, sort of

In the recent movie “Warm Bodies” a potential inference can be made that we, humans and all of our technological advances, are indirectly responsible for the zombie apocalypse. This may be an inference that is just simply someone reading way too deep into a simple love story.

This is not the first time that lack of communication has been cited as society’s downfall.

We revel in the advances we have made in the world of technology, but can we say it has brought us closer together? Many would say that we are even further apart than we were before, by way of making the world closer together.

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Those who grew up with these technological advances face the dilemma of not knowing how to interact with each other. Many may roll their eyes at these, as they hear these same complaints from the older generations. It is considered rude to pay more attention to the beeping device in your hand than the person you are actually with. Or, it was.

What is this teaching those who can type a message faster than they can write a sentence? With technology, we have the luxury of time. We can think about what we write and go back and delete something if we didn’t. In a face-to-face conversation, that luxury isn’t afforded and we must be able to censor ourselves as the thought travels from brain to mouth. If not, it serves to create tension filled situations. The skill of censoring ourselves is being lost. There isn’t a delete button on life’s mistakes. There are only reparations.

Another complaint is the lack of editing oneself on the Internet and in texts. Spelling and grammar have gone out the window, in favor of shorthand and increasingly common slang that can confuse anyone who hasn’t caught on to the latest round of acronyms. The grammar teachers of yesteryear are rolling in their graves at the increase of “ain’t” that is used in postings all over the Internet.

We have developed a dependency on technology that will only increase as more automation is put in place to ease life. It will be a hard habit to break, but it is necessary to remember the skills we will need to know should our world of shiny buttons suddenly go dark.

Social media increases social interaction, this is true, but physical interaction is something that is necessary to society. Or else, we may be responsible for the masses of connection-seeking zombies that reside outside of the edges of society, that we inadvertently put there ourselves as our want of technology consumes us more.

Feb 13 2013

Editorial: Scandals shed light on social disparity

As we return from break, the news is offering continuing coverage of two scandals shaking the athletic world: the Lance Armstrong doping revelation and the “catfishing” of Manti Te’o. Does the news give these athletes too much attention for something that a normal person would perhaps be less than kindly received for? This is always the question presented when these kind of scandals break.

Perhaps the true question lies in the interest. Why do we care? These are people, career athletes, who none of us have ever met. Mayhap, it is in the underlying outrage that they are career athletes and, like celebrities, receive more than their due.

This is said because career athletes and celebrities do not provide vital societal necessities and receive more accolades and, to be frank, money, than those that do provide them.

The salary for a teacher in Oklahoma, with 25-plus years of experience and a Bachelor’s degree, is $42,325, according to the Oklahoma State Department of Education Pay Schedule.

A military member, those men and women who risk their lives so we can retain the freedoms we enjoy, with two years of service makes a little under $34,000.

Kevin Durant, the face of the Thunder, the team that changed the economic outlook of Oklahoma City, made a little over $16 million in 2012.

One more time: $16 MILLION. It would take that man or woman in the military 470 years, to make what Kevin Durant, made in one.

The argument from the industry paying these athletes is that an athlete is not paid just to play a sport. They are paid based on the revenue they bring into the sports market. Essentially, Durant isn’t paid based on the fact that he can dunk the ball more than the guy on the other team, but BECAUSE he can dunk it more, he brings in more audience, more ticket sales, a larger Nielsen count for the broadcast, more merchandise sold, and so brings in more revenue.

Whilst this does offer a realistic explanation as to why athletes get paid so much, it still stands that athletes are perhaps held to a different standard. Tiger Woods had not one, but dozens of extramarital affairs. Mike Tyson was convicted of rape and served three of a six-year sentence. Brett Favre sent explicit photos to a sideline reporter, the case was dropped, but he was fined $50,000 for not complying with investigators. All of these men are names that would be recognized by anyone, even those who don’t follow sports. And all of these men returned to what they were doing before the scandal, making in the millions for a yearly salary, to fans who had forgiven them and returned in droves to pay astronomical prices to see them perform.

The public needs to take a stand when it comes to choosing where the true societal benefits lie. Teachers, military members, policemen, firefighters, these are people on the front lines of the advancement of society, whether it be protecting it or preparing the next generation to be contributing members of society, these are the people who should be making in the millions, or at least be making enough to support a family comfortably.

Oct 15 2012

Letter to the Editor

 

In your editorial of 12 Oct., I like that you provided figures for PBS, vacant federal buildings, and farm subsidies.  That does put things in perspective.
I would have to see, again, the part of the debate in which Romney brings up Big Bird; but I do not believe he “promised” to cut funding to PBS.  His point was that he would cut funding of things for which we have to borrow money from China to keep running.  No matter what gets cut, they are going to impact someone.  I, for one, would like to see the U.S. stop borrowing money from other countries.

- BJ Vinson

Sep 28 2012

Romney gaffes lead to obvious Obama question

Graphic Courtesy of mctcampus.com

If there were ever a gift to Saturday Night Live, it would be the 2012 election season.

On the episode featuring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the Weekend Update segment “What Are You Doing?” took aim at Obama as he brought attention to himself from Romney’s tailspin.

In one week, Romney managed to insult nearly half the country, then stand by those words, is suspected of using self-tanner during an interview with Univision, and finally his V.P. pick Paul Ryan is booed at the AARP.

To clarify, when speaking at a campaign fundraiser Mitt Romney said, “there are 47 percent who are with him [President Obama], who are dependent upon government, who believe they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it…and they will vote for this president no matter what…these are people who pay no income tax…and so my job is to not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” Continue reading →

Sep 18 2012

A training ground for democracy

Dennis Gosnell

Assistant Editor

A training ground for democracy

Picture caption: Being involved in student government is one way to get your voice heard and be active in decision-making.

Community involvement is a vital and crucial part of the democratic system. Without it people would be under-represented in congressional halls. Yet, people rarely take the time to get involved and speak up for their communities when given the chance.

Continue reading →

Sep 11 2012

From the editor: 9/11, Eleven Years Later

Chelsea Ratterman

Editor in Chief

Today marks the 11th anniversary of the attacks that shocked our nation. Today, ceremonies are being held at the three sites most affected, New York, Pennsylvania and Washington D.C., to honor those who died that day.

Each year, a flag is hung over the now rebuilt part of the Pentagon that was destroyed in the September 11th attacks.

Continue reading →

Sep 5 2012

Pro Choice by principle

Chelsea Ratterman

Editor in Chief

Pro Choice by principle

The GOP has attempted to draw in women voters, to close the gender gap that pushed President Obama to the 2008 win, but their recently reaffirmed views on women might make that gap grow even more.

The platform the GOP approved calls for a constitutional amendment called the “Human Life Amendment” that gives legal status to the unborn, with no-exception for rape in the abortion stance and a measure that opposed FDA approval of drugs like RU-486, which has been used in medical abortions.

Continue reading →